The Inside Edge, page 17
The doors opened on the parking level, but Aubrey didn’t get out yet, giving Nate the gimlet eye.
Nate relented. “Fine. I have an SUV and a sports car. The Corvette’s in storage until the last snowfall of the season.”
“Ha! Beat you.” Aubrey raised his car keys, and an engine started about halfway down the lot. “I have three, but only one’s in Chicago.”
Nate was going to regret asking this, but—“Where do you keep the other ones?”
“Vancouver. But it’s not what you think.” Aubrey’s car was a sleek black Audi S8, which was not at all what Nate expected. “My parents bought me a car to get to the rink when I turned sixteen. I still have it.”
Nate envisioned a car similar to this one, only older. “And the other one?”
“Uh, well, it’s in a box.”
“A box.” Nate reached for the door handle. This was a nice car. Nate had had nice cars since he’d made the NHL, but this was another level of luxury.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I got drunk when I was nineteen and ordered a kit car on the internet. Delusions of grandeur.”
Nate grinned. “So three cars, but only two you can drive. Here I thought you trust-fund types were supposed to be either frugal or splashy spenders. What’s this moderation about?”
Aubrey slid behind the wheel and shot him an uncharacteristically shy look. “What can I say? I have layers.”
Nate wasn’t exactly a car guy, but the purr of the S8’s engine was sexy. “I guess you do.”
The traffic was about as light as traffic got at this time in Chicago, and Aubrey pulled into a parking lot fifteen minutes later.
Inside the restaurant, Nate inhaled and immediately said, “Oh my God, I’m starving.”
“Gotta say, the reviews were not kidding about the smell in here.”
The host greeted them with a pleasant smile. “Mr. Chase! Your table is ready. Please follow me.”
The ambiance in the dining room matched the smell. Rich dark wood and red fabric with gold accents made the place feel luxurious. Paper screens had been strategically placed to provide privacy without impeding the flow of foot traffic.
Probably not the kind of place to serve fortune cookies, Nate thought, but he couldn’t wait to try everything else.
Their table was a corner booth with a pot of tea and a bottle of wine already waiting. The host handed them their menus and went over a list of specials that had Nate’s stomach growling, then let them know their server would be by shortly.
“They’ve covered every eventuality, I see,” Nate said, motioning to the tea and wine.
“I may have made a request when I called for a reservation.” Aubrey picked up the bottle. “Shall I?”
“Absolutely.” A glass of wine would help settle nerves he shouldn’t be having. He’d been out for dinner with Aubrey a dozen times. Besides—Aubrey loved him.
Even if they hadn’t had sex in the past week.
Maybe that was why Nate felt edgy.
“Any idea what you want to eat?”
“Everything?” Nate said helplessly. “Rice. Noodles. Soup. Meat.”
“Meat,” Aubrey agreed with feeling. He dropped the menu on the table. “Want to do the tasting menu?”
“You read my mind.”
IT WAS probably stupid, how anxious Aubrey felt walking Nate to his apartment door. He could feel his pulse beating in his neck, just below his ear, and his palms were damp.
Well, he’d wanted the full first-date experience. Now he had it. Maybe it was weird to walk a grown man to his apartment when you lived in the same building? But what else was he supposed to do? The night didn’t feel like it should end yet.
They reached Nate’s door, and he took out his keys and turned them over in his hand. “Well. This is me.”
That was such a cliché that even Aubrey recognized it as his opening, but somehow he couldn’t get his mouth to make the words he needed. “Right,” his brain said instead, calling up some long-forgotten romantic comedy. “I had a nice time tonight.”
Oh my God, I am hopeless. Aubrey fought the urge to facepalm.
Nate gave him a look that said he’d seen the movie too. “Me too,” he said. “Good night, Aubrey.”
“Good night.”
In any movie worth its salt, this was where the hero would lean in and kiss the other hero, and Nate would fumble the door open, and they’d knock into things while taking their clothes off all the way to the bedroom. But no one was writing Aubrey’s script for him, so instead of a kiss, all he got was the soft click of Nate’s door closing.
You utter coward, sneered the part of Aubrey’s brain that made him comment on Nate’s sex life within twenty minutes of meeting him. You chickenshit noodle-spined impotent pile of—Virgins on prom night seal the deal every spring, and you can’t even get a kiss from a man who’s in love with you?
Fuck. That.
Aubrey could deal with suddenly turning into a person who dated. That was character growth. But becoming a guy people would classify as someone who said, “Not on the first date”? That was a full-on identity crisis.
He crossed the space back to Nate’s door in three long strides. He didn’t have Nate’s key on him, but only thirty seconds had passed. Nate should still be able to hear him.
He knocked. Possibly too loudly and definitely too many times, but once his hand started doing something, he couldn’t get it to stop.
He had no idea how much time passed before Nate opened the door. It felt like minutes and half a second simultaneously. Time warped around him until the door moved inward and Nate looked at him, raising a brow.
“Did you f—”
Aubrey kissed him.
He could taste Nate’s smile under the hint of mochi from their dessert.
Nate brought his hands up to Aubrey’s neck and pulled him into the apartment, where Aubrey fumbled comically behind him to close the door.
“I really thought you were just going to go upstairs,” Nate gasped when Aubrey broke away from his mouth to lay a trail of kisses down his jaw to his neck.
“I really almost did.” Aubrey bit below his ear, rucking up the hem of Nate’s sweater. They were still moving, tearing at each other’s clothes, but he was pretty sure the bedroom was a pipe dream. They’d never make it.
The flow of time warped again. Aubrey got Nate’s sweater off and spent half a lifetime touching his chest, his abs, the cut of his hip. He lost years discovering the way Nate sucked in a breath when Aubrey thumbed his nipples or trailed his fingers into the V of his obliques.
But time seemed to be moving differently for Nate. The heat of his mouth on Aubrey’s neck lasted only a heartbeat, and the sure, deft strokes of his fingers as he unbuttoned Aubrey’s shirt were over almost before they began. Despite the discrepancy in time passage, they were both shirtless when they ran up against the back of the couch.
The First Date part of Aubrey’s brain said, Take him to the bedroom at least, you heathen.
The rest of Aubrey’s brain thought, Good enough.
Then Nate fumbled with Aubrey’s belt, and it didn’t much matter. The time for thinking had passed.
He got Nate’s jeans and boxers shoved down to his knees and curled a hand around his cock, earning a low moan and the scrape of Nate’s nails across the front of his thigh. A quick jerk of the fabric and Nate took him in hand, sliding his callused palm over the head of Aubrey’s dick.
Nate produced lube from somewhere. Had he hidden it in the couch? Grabbed it on the way to the door? Aubrey didn’t care. He pulled Nate’s leg up to his hip, lining their erections up to brush together, and opened the cap.
He ate Nate’s gasps of pleasure and pleas to hurry right out of his mouth, two fingers crooked inside him. Nate’s cock leaked against his stomach, and Aubrey’s throbbed in response.
Nate was hot and perfect around his fingers, body clenching as though trying to reel Aubrey in. Aubrey was happy to be caught, but when he drew his hand back for more lube and a third finger, Nate bit down on his lower lip, shocking him into opening his eyes.
“Now,” Nate said.
Here? Aubrey almost asked, but Nate shoved him back half a step and then turned around and bent over the back of the couch. His ass—his perfectly round monument to a lifetime of athletic training, the kind of bubble that could make a man weep for joy—or a man’s cock, at least—stuck out obscenely, inviting Aubrey to look and touch his fill, but mostly to—
“Fuck me,” Nate said, as though he hadn’t already made himself perfectly clear.
“Yes,” Aubrey said intelligently, and applied himself to the task.
Nate pushed back into every thrust. The slap of flesh on flesh layered over the rough sounds of their breathing and the skid of the couch on the hardwood. Fuck, they still had their shoes on. This was not first-date sex. It definitely was not I-love-you sex.
Aubrey couldn’t bring himself to care.
He fitted his thumbs into the dimples of Nate’s lower back, curling his fingers around Nate’s hips.
“Just,” Nate panted, “a little—” He shifted his feet farther apart, deepened the bow of his back.
Aubrey’s eyes almost rolled back in his head at the visual, but that was nothing to how it felt to slide deep into Nate’s body. They couldn’t keep it up for long. Aubrey was already skirting the edge of orgasm. “Do you need—?”
Nate arched his back, and the sight of it almost sent Aubrey over the edge, but he was only reaching for the lube Aubrey had left on the back of the couch. “I got it,” Nate gasped.
Jesus, did he ever.
The air was thick with sex, and despite the chill of the apartment, sweat dripped down Nate’s back and down Aubrey’s. He could feel it trickling between his shoulder blades, between his asscheeks. He wanted to lean down and sink his teeth into Nate’s shoulder, but he couldn’t sacrifice his leverage. Next time, he promised himself.
“Close,” Aubrey gasped. “You with me?”
Nate made a strangled noise, jerking himself off frantically now. “Uh, fuck—”
That must have been a yes, because it only took a handful more thrusts before Nate’s ass tightened around him. Aubrey pushed as deep as he could as Nate milked his orgasm out of him, pleasure coursing through his body. With one last snap of his hips, Aubrey collapsed against Nate’s back and finally gave in to the urge to bite his deltoid.
The couch slid under their combined weight, far enough that Aubrey felt the pull in his hamstring. The arm of the couch hit something. He raised his head as a hollow whoomp echoed throughout the room, and was just in time to see Nate’s stupid ugly vase wobble on the table as if in slow motion and then topple to the ground and shatter with a resounding crash.
Aubrey blinked, his mind comically blank.
For a moment the only sound was their own labored breathing. Then Nate started to shake beneath him. Horrified, Aubrey drew back, scrambling for an apology (and the condom), but a moment later, the sound got louder and he realized Nate was laughing—silently, but it built into a very contagious belly laugh.
“Sorry,” Aubrey wheezed into the back of the couch. He’d pulled out and managed to keep the condom from further despoiling Nate’s living room, but between the exertion and the lack of oxygen, his legs had given out, and he was sprawled next to Nate across the back of the couch. “I didn’t—mean to—murder your ugly vase.”
Nate hiccupped, red-faced with tears streaking down his cheeks. “Good fucking riddance,” he gasped. “I should’ve done that years ago.”
Aubrey managed a few deep breaths, enough to be able to string together a sentence without pausing. “Why did you keep it?”
Nate rolled over onto his back, starfished comically over the couch. “Marty said he wanted me to have it because he knew how much I liked it.”
“Nate.”
“Hm.”
“Do you think he was fucking with you?”
“I couldn’t tell.” He stood, a little awkwardly, between the lube and the come and the pants around his ankles, held on by his shoes. “I figured if I played along it was as good as fucking with him right back.”
Aubrey digested this as he pushed himself to his feet. “Sometimes that competitive drive really bites us in the ass.”
“Yeah.” Nate looked over at the floor and winced, then looked back at his feet. “But on the plus side, that drive is probably why we’re both wearing shoes right now and not in danger of cutting our feet.”
“True.” Aubrey pulled up his own jeans and buckled them. “All right. Here’s the play. We clean this up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then we reward our hard work by going up to mine and sitting in the Jacuzzi tub.”
“Sold.” Nate looked down at himself and grimaced again. “Just let me do a little personal cleanup first.”
Chapter Nineteen
NOVEMBER BLEW into December, along with a lot more wind and snow and a flurry of holiday shopping. Nate liked to get most of his out of the way the weekend after Thanksgiving, but between his parents’ visit and sex with Aubrey, he had barely made a dent.
At work, the mood had improved post-holiday, leaving Nate to wonder if everyone simply needed a good meal and some time with their family. Kelly and Caley’s news had the studio buzzing—everyone loved good news—and Carl brought photos of his newest pride and joy, grandchild number four.
On the air, Nate and Aubrey were smooth as a newly resurfaced rink and as sharp as fresh blades. The Thursday after Thanksgiving, Jess pulled them aside as Kelly covered the women’s game.
“What’s up?” Aubrey asked as the door to the office closed.
Jess ditched her earpiece on the desk. “Are you guys doing some kind of mind-reading thing or something?”
Nate glanced at Aubrey. “Mind-reading?” they chorused, turning back to Jess in unison.
She pointed at them. “See! That! That’s creepy. I mean, it’s compelling television, but it’s still creepy.”
Aubrey glanced at Nate. “Sorry,” they said, in unison again.
Nate felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, but he tamped down on it.
Jess stared at them. For a second, Nate thought she’d actually ask, but after a moment, she shook her head and moved on. “Well, I specifically remember telling you not to change anything, but since you actually got better, I can’t complain.”
“Does this mean we’re off the chopping block?” Nate asked.
“What am I, a fortune-teller?” She rolled her eyes. “The meeting’s next week. I told you, the network does not like to be rushed.”
“So what did you call us in here for?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She smiled, and Nate could have sworn, once again, that she was going to congratulate them. Instead she just said, “Producer stuff. Keep up the good work.”
“She knows,” Aubrey hissed as they walked back to the set.
Nate figured maybe she did.
AS LUCK would have it, their first road trip after Thanksgiving put them in Vegas. Before he and Nate started dating for real, Aubrey had emailed a real estate agent just to take a look around. Whether he took the job or not—whether the show was renewed or not—his contract was up after playoffs, and it might not be renewed. He was keeping his options open.
He was supposed to swing by the Cirque office, maybe take a tour of their facility if he had time.
The problem was how to fit all that into one day without Nate noticing. Not because Aubrey didn’t want him to know, but because he felt like he should have told him already, even though he hadn’t auditioned. Even though he didn’t plan to leave unless the worst happened. Somehow it felt like if he mentioned it, it would be a vote of no confidence on both the show and their relationship.
So keeping it secret from Nate was a problem… or it would have been a problem, except Nate ate the chicken cacciatore on the red-eye they took late Friday night.
To avoid scrutiny, they’d agreed not to stay in each other’s rooms on business trips, especially since it had come out in an interview with a local magazine that they’d shared in Winnipeg. So Aubrey didn’t find out Nate was sick until the next morning. He woke up to a text message—Food poisoning. Feel like im dying.
God, poor Nate. Aubrey was resolved to be a good boyfriend, but he wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. Should he go hold his hair back, metaphorically speaking? But Aubrey wouldn’t want anyone to see him heave his breakfast into a toilet bowl, especially not Nate.
What if Nate needed help getting to the toilet bowl, though? That was the least sexy thought Aubrey had ever had about Nate, but he wasn’t going to let him suffer. Boyfriends sucked it up and offered their services in situations like this. That was what love was for. Right?
Aubrey was kind of hoping not, but to be sure, he walked down the hall to Nate’s door and knocked. He could cancel his apartment showings. “Nate?” he called. “You need anything?”
It took a moment, but eventually Nate opened the door. His face was ashen, sallow, and damp with sweat. Aubrey fought the urge to take a step back. He smelled like stale sweat and vomit. “Front desk is sending up some meds.”
They had a call in six hours. “Are you going to—”
He never got to finish the sentence. Nate ran to the bathroom. He didn’t even have time to close the door; Aubrey could hear him retching from the hallway.
“I’ll tell Jess to send Kelly in your place? We can do a teleconference for the intermission interviews.”
Nate retched again, and Aubrey’s stomach rebelled. What a time to find out he’d turned into a sympathetic vomiter. “Thanks,” Nate said weakly a moment later.
“I’m, uh, I’m going to go,” Aubrey said. “Text me if you need anything, okay?”
Nate didn’t answer verbally, but he stuck his arm out the bathroom door and gave a thumbs-up.
Aubrey fled and carefully closed the door behind him.
Then he set out house-hunting, even though he was only looking semi-seriously. He stood in the center of the living room of the first apartment. It was furnished, on a fashionably high floor, with huge tinted windows with blackout curtains. It might as well be his apartment in Chicago. The layout was almost the same—one huge bedroom, open floor plan, big bathroom. This one had laundry service instead of an in-suite setup. There was a pool on the roof and a gym on the main floor.
